When's the best time to release a project?

[BlueFireZ88]

The title says all.

[ibm5155]

when it´s all working with bug free. (at least most of them ^^)
or if just post you´re doing a new mod and didn´t finish it, at least you must have something to show not only text files...

[Ravick]

I'm guessing he means what day in a week or what month (because I've seem someone post something about it in a fell days).

I don't know. See, older players will play most on the weekend, because they have to work, some still study. Maybe on summer/vacation months, I guess. I usually just play on weekends. But I don't know when the majority uses to play.

[Gez]

That was yesterday. Now it's too late.


Seriously though, for optimal release date, try "two-or-three workdays before a weekend/holiday". There are less people chatting on forums and stuff during weekend, because they get free time to do stuff like "going outside", "hanging out with friends", "visiting family" and other weird Internetless activities. You want a workday, during workhours, so that everybody can be sitting in front of their computer alt-tabbing to their hobby forums as soon as the boss/teacher/etc. stops looking their way. That's why you want to release on a workday, you'll get a lot more immediate feedback.

You also want it to be before a weekend/holiday, so that people will have some freetime to play your mod. But! Just in case there are critical issues that you haven't caught during your own private testing, you'll want to have some margin to release a hotfix before everybody moves away from their computers.

[printz]

When it's done.

[Medricel]

When it's done.

I can't help but think that this much is fairly obvious.

[Marnetmar]

Not the same day as the Cacowards.

[Xaser]

The day before might work okay, though.

[leileilol]

When school's out

Sadly, and strangely, a lot of Doom fans still go to school.

[BloodyAcid]

April Fools.

[Sgt Dopey]

February 29th

[Jimmy]

The day before might work okay, though.

Haha. I still can't believe that worked, to be honest.

Just before the Cacowards tends to work if you've been working hard to make said project a Cacoward contender. Jenesis was released in November and that allowed a little bit of time for it to soak into the community and for opinions to start taking form before it went stale or before it got usurped by any other serious contenders.

It's slightly underhanded but it does work.

[Nash]

If it's a high-profile project, then it doesn't really matter when you release it; people will want to play it anyway.

Or you can attach a gimmicky release date to it, like 12/12/12.

[BloodyAcid]

Of course, that's only applicable for the remainder of this year. I guess 04/04 or 01/01 would work as well, though good luck finding a 13/13/13

[DaMan]

Same week as that movie you don't like.